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Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Blog Tour: Beautiful Ape Girl Baby

Hey everyone! Grab the Lapels is smack in the middle of their blog tour for Heather Fowler's upcoming release Beautiful Ape Girl Baby, and we're thrilled to be a part of it! Today, we bring you the exciting journey of watching one's novel being turned into a short film....

“BEAUTIFUL APE GIRL BABY Goes Hollywood:

Novel to Short
Film: an Author’s Experience”

by Heather Fowler

There’s something amazingly special when your book, crafted
in solitude, suddenly has actors filling the roles before the final, first copy
gets released to the world. This was my experience watching a short film shoot
for my forthcoming novel Beautiful Ape
Girl Baby(Pink
Narcissus Press, June 2016). I suppose my work has flirted with adaption to
multi-media formats for a long time. A short story about a girl stalked by her
relentless ex-boyfriend is currently pending adaption for another short film, a
different short story set in the French Revolution is in process for adaptation
to opera, and I’m now an author who moves into writing for film and stage with
more serious intent.

But before these last two years, it was me, my computer, and
the moving canvas of my lonely imagination. I never expected to actually watch
a shoot any time soon. When I did this April, I realized that having
professional actors breathe life into one’s characters is awe-inspiring, particularly
when they embody characters I’ve worked with for a long time, heard speaking,
and imagined thinking. While it’s true that many who read Beautiful Ape Girl Baby in early stages had remarked, sometimes
heatedly, “This should be a movie!” I hardly imagined this suggestion would
come to pass with such alacrity.

In fact, when I first asked for help with a making a
two-minute book trailer several months ago, it was a sheepish request to a
talented woman friend who already knew her way around film. I asked her to make
something, anything I could put on my website and use as a book promotion tool.
“Could you just do something to showcase the blurbs, Lauren?” I’d asked. “The
book has great blurbs. Something with the book cover
and maybe some stock music.” From Lauren, I’d expected a “no” since she’s very
busy, or maybe hoped I could convince her to see my request as a quick project
she could put together over a weekend. But from the moment Lauren Rachel
Berman, head of Divergent Delusion Productions, finished
reading the book, she had other ideas.

I still remember the shock and dazed sense of wonder I felt
when she first replied to the trailer inquiry, “I really want to film the scene
with her and the two cops. I can't get it out of my head.” By “her,” she meant
the novel’s protagonist, named Beautiful. Lauren then said, “I keep playing
around with how I could block it and cast it and pull it together…” In what
seemed a blink to me, Lauren then requested tear sheets about the characters,
put together a film adaptation for the scene she envisioned, and planned to
cast it immediately. “I’ll send you the good audition reels,” she told me,
pretty much assuring me I didn’t want to see bad ones.

The scene she wanted to film is from early in the book. On
the tear sheet for Beautiful’s character went as follows:

“Details

Female / Principal /
Caucasian / 18 - 30

Description

Beautiful Ape Girl Baby is the heroine/anti-heroine
character from Heather Fowler’s soon to release novel entitled Beautiful Ape Girl Baby. Innocent and
worldly at once, she was raised on an estate by wealthy parents who hired
friends to make her appearance as a strange, ape-like looking girl seem the
epitome of female beauty. She is described as blue-eyed, walnut haired, and
strong as a horse, with occasional bouts of lacked impulse control and violence.
A confident woman, she enters every scene like she is the star. She perceives
herself to be magnanimous and kind.

Scene description: In a confrontation with two somewhat
rural policemen, Beautiful Ape Girl Baby at first wants to evade their arrest
so she can continue on her clandestine mission to meet her mentor across the
country and then cuffs them together and instead wants to provide them with
co-counseling about the gay relationship she assumes she sees when one cop
tries to protect the other.”

We lucked out and got several interesting actresses to send
reels for this character, but while watching auditions for all the roles both
at home in San Diego and with Lauren the week before the shoot in Los Angeles,
I knew I’d been privileged to see something pretty rare for an author to have
access to—the vision of seeing people engaging with fictive characters, acting
out their dialogue multiple ways with multiple interpretations, and filming
themselves doing so. I remember feeling completely fascinated by one audition
for the role of Beautiful from a gorgeous Asian actress who showed a special
talent of realistically kicking ass at the end of her audition reel. While we
didn’t end up going with her since we were more delighted by the reel sent in
by Marjan Elliott, who plays Beautiful in the film, it was great to see that
the types of actresses attracted to this character were fierce as well as
fascinating. I took no less pleasure in watching the men’s auditions for the
cops.

But let’s talk shoot: April 10, 2016. That morning, surreal
and floating with anticipation, I knew my book’s scene was about to become a
visceral recording. I drove from Laguna Niguel to Santa Maria, California,
early enough to hear the bird refrains ring louder than vehicular traffic. Before
8 a.m. I arrived on set to see actress Marjan
Elliott get made up to play my novel’s leading lady.

The make-up artist, pictured above with Marjan Elliott, was
the startlingly lovely and intuitive Denisse Moran. As you see from the photo,
the make-up is light—it is after all, one of few scenes in which the
protagonist, described as a beautiful ape woman, looks mostly human because the
character has shaved her face to fit in.

Before the filming began, scripts were spread across tables.
Soon thereafter, the actors playing the cops arrived, and the crew began to
assemble. It was a divine moment when I realized my scene was about to happen.

I couldn’t have known, when I saw the device I
affectionately refer to as “the clacker,” how intense it would be to watch take
after take of this scene. But, an hour into the shoot, the sky let loose a
torrent of rain and almost ruined it all. I kept thinking: “Oh no! They’d have
to stop if this keeps up!” because I came to understand that while the
production company could shoot in light rain, if the sky did not stop
destroying the set, within a designated time frame, there’d soon be no shoot.
You can see below the sky before the deluge.

It was particularly heartbreaking to think of the rain
making all cease since the cop car, the stunt driver, boom microphone, multiple
cameras, actors, director, more crew—so many people and things—had been
gathered to make this happen on this day. But as the rain slashed down, as we
ran for cover, my own review copy of the book in my hand had to be used as
impromptu umbrella, and it seemed that destroyed review copy might be a
harbinger for the rest of the day.

Still, even had we been unable to go on, I was aware that no
matter what happened next, the first hour of the morning had been magical, and
the beauty of seeing the early part of the filming was powerful. As we waited
out the rain, the crew and I had the pleasure of watching Lauren Rachel Berman
direct scripted reads and then off-book reads with the actors. In these
moments, I saw segments of the story they hadn’t yet filmed. Again and again,
the actors brought more to the read-throughs, engaging in playful exercises.
There are no pictures of these private moments, but having seen them remains a
favorite memory from the shoot.

Then, miraculously, what we’d seen as huge puddles and
relentless rain transformed rapidly into warm blue skies. It was decided
immediately: filming would recommence.

Throughout the segments shot next, Lauren Rachel Berman
astounded me with the creative solutions she came up with for how to make the
film true to the text.

Below you see the exchange where Marjan, a gorgeous woman
with a delicate frame, as Beautiful manhandles the cop character called Vick,
played by Jimmy Jones, III. While it’s easy to make a woman quite strong in a
novel, to show it on film certainly needed Hollywood magic, showing me
firsthand how superhuman strength in a book made the filming of such exchanges
require intense conversation and blocking. You can also see that while the
cameras make it appear that Vick is suspended in mid-air, a victim of
Beautiful’s chokehold, to make it look effortless for Marjan, a step-ladder
came into play.

Humorously, sometime into the filming of this scene, I
remember being called upon as author to participate in a conversation that went
something to the effect of, “How many hands does Beautiful have? In the book,
she grabs a cop in a chokehold, holds a gun, catches a pair of cuffs, and while
doing this, verbally perseverates on the difficulty of this situation. A little
hard on an actress.” Well, the Beautiful
in my mind has a thousand hands, I thought, amused, but clearly the one
being filmed would need four or five to do things properly for the excerpt.
Nonetheless, through some elegant decisions, Lauren made the scene work,
adapting the script where we stood and getting the filming done. Again and
again, the scenes were performed from different angles. Not only the cops,
Jimmy Jones, III (Vick) and Dumont Darsey (Ed), but everyone affiliated worked
hard in the hot sun. I have to say, it was exciting to see that the cops’
portrayals were just as intricate as Marjan’s.

Here’s Jimmy as Vick, hamming it up in a moment between
takes with his gun and his megaphone. There’s something electric about a
megaphone, isn’t there? I, too, wanted to play with it, though I never got the
chance. That aside, at day’s end, I’d definitely say that while to watch the
shoot of the heavy action segments with the cop car was fierce, it was the
scenes shot later in the day in the ditch, where Beautiful acts as therapist to
the cops, that revealed more of the true vulnerability and multi-faceted nature
of the cops.

To see Marjan Elliott bring Beautiful
to life and watch the cop actors perform all scenes Lauren adapted was
completely special and otherworldly for me, but I felt equally indebted and
impressed by the work of all the other generous people affiliated with the
shoot who included: Jared Berman on the camera and acting as Director of
Photography, Line Producer Jose Mendoza, Chase Rubin working as stunt driver,
and Sam Caterisano as 1st Assistant Director and Field Mixer/Boom Operator. So,
yes, writing a book may take an author a long time, working alone—but anywhere
near Hollywood, film creation takes a proverbial village working together, and
every hand participating in that action helps make the magic that creates the
durable art.

For the sake of my work, for twelve hours, first in the
pouring rain and then the blistering sun, the people who made this shoot happen
did so with immaculate passion and professionalism, Lauren at the helm. That’s
pretty humbling.

So, where’s everything now? The film is with an editor, soon
to be scored, and we hope it will be made available for film festivals in the
near future. It’s my hope that readers can get behind both the film and the
novel, Beautiful Ape Girl Baby,when they see so much going on with it,
and help our efforts reach a wider audience.

If anyone wants updates for when they can see the film or
other announcements about my work, follow my website,
Facebook, or Twitter.
And help this wild literary book with a strong female protagonist get an
audience that will only increase with the film’s release.

Heather Fowler is a poet, a fiction writer, a playwright, and a novelist. She is the author of the forthcoming novel Beautiful Ape Girl Baby (June 2016 release) and the story collections Suspended Heart (2010), People with Holes (2012), This Time, While We're Awake (2013), and Elegantly Naked In My Sexy Mental Illness (2014). Fowler’s People with Holes was named a 2012 finalist for Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Award in Short Fiction. Her fictive work has been made into fine art in several instances and her collaborative poetry collection, Bare Bulbs Swinging, written with Meg Tuite and Michelle Reale, is the winner of the 2013 TWIN ANTLERS PRIZE FOR COLLABORATIVE POETRY released in December of 2014. Fowler has published stories and poems online and in print in the U.S., England, Australia, and India, and had work appear in such venues as PANK, Night Train, storyglossia, Surreal South, Feminist Studies, and more, as well as having been nominated for the storySouth Million Writers Award, Sundress Publications Best of the Net, and Pushcart Prizes. She is Poetry Editor at Corium Magazine.

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Who's That Girl?

I have been buried beneath small press and self-published review copies since 2009. My passion for supporting the small press and self publishing communities has driven me out into the world wide web to demonstrate alternative ways to spread the word about amazing publishers, authors, and novels you might never had heard of. Feeding your reading addiction, one book at a time.